Author: EurekAlert!

Headsets and haptic gloves could connect doctors and patients thousands of miles apart in a virtual hospital. Sensors could monitor someone's health or help teachers know if their students are paying attention. Scanners could allow objects from a person's home to appear in their favorite video game. Glasses could help people with visual impairments navigate the world around them. Extended reality (XR) technologies have the potential to complement or replace smartphones, laptops, tablets and other devices for many tasks.

Carnegie Mellon University has launched its Extended Reality Technology Center (XRTC) to bring together researchers, industry and consumers to maximize the potential of emerging developments in the field. The XRTC will drive the development of extended reality technologies, create a curriculum to train the next generation of XR talent, and encourage consumers to participate in its design and ultimately use the new tools.

The XRTC will be led by co-directors De La Torre, Kris Kitani and David Lindlbauer, all faculty in the School of Computer Science (SCS). The center will unite researchers from across the university including from elsewhere in SCS and in the College of Engineering, Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, College of Fine Arts, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, CMU Libraries, and Entertainment Technology Center. The XRTC's work will be based at the new Robotics Innovation Center at Hazelwood Green.

The XRTC will launch with founding sponsors PNC and Fujitsu, companies that see XR technologies as transformative to their businesses and customer interactions.

Researchers from the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture have received a $500,000 USDA-NIFA grant to develop virtual reality experiences for agriscience education and analyze the benefits of using these types of activities in the classroom.

The Virtual Experience Research Accelerator (VERA), a $5 million National Science Foundation-funded project, is creating a system to provide researchers with access to large, reliable, diverse groups of participants for an array of research projects on and using VR. The nearly $5 million project is part of the NSF’s recently announced $16.1 million Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Community Research Infrastructure grant awards.

A study shows how virtual reality could be used by basketball coaches to scout new talent and improve training. Staffordshire University’s Dr Pooya Soltani co-led the research with Dr Antoine Morice from Aix-Marseille University. The experiment invited both experienced and novice basketball players to shoot ‘virtual’ hoops in a realistic basketball simulator where their performance was evaluated using three scales; how the ball interacted with the hoop, how players interacted with the ball, and how players adjusted their movements.

Exposure to an augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) environment can cause people to experience cybersickness — a special type of motion sickness with symptoms ranging from dizziness to nausea — and existing research to mitigate the severity of the symptoms often relies upon a one-size-fits-all approach. However, Khaza Anuarul Hoque, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Missouri, and a team of researchers are working to develop a personalized approach to identifying cybersickness by focusing on the root causes, which can be different for every person.